AI and gender equality

International Women’s Day (IWD) is celebrated annually on March 8 to raise awareness about women’s rights. IWD is strongly linked to women’s movements throughout history for advancing equality. Therefore, the day marks a call to action for accelerating gender parity through positive changes.

In today’s world, many challenges are looming over the efforts to close the gender gap and achieve gender equality. One of the threats to gender equality is unregulated reliance on artificial intelligence (AI). There is a direct link between AI and gender equality at the workplace. To ensure gender parity, it is important to regulate the use of AI to forge a gender-equal world.

Gender inequality is deeply rooted in society. According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index 2023, no country has yet achieved full gender parity. Further, it will take 162 years to close the ‘political empowerment’ gender gap, 169 years for the ‘economic participation and opportunity’ gender gap, and 16 years for the ‘educational attainment’ gender gap.

Pakistan, along with Iran and Afghanistan, is at the bottom of both the regional and global ranking tables. The country ranked at 142 out of 146 countries on the Global Gender Gap Index 2023.

While AI may appear neutral, it has been developed by human beings. This means that AI can hold the same biases that humans hold, including gender bias. Further, AI depends on existing data to train algorithms. There is a lack of sufficient gender-balanced data due to historic discrimination against women. Since the databases reflect existing gender inequalities, it can lead to biased decisions when AI learns from them.

The use of AI is rapidly becoming more prevalent in workplaces. This can negatively influence women’s employment opportunities and their roles, status, and treatment at the workplace. For example, if the data mostly shows men in certain jobs (for example, only two women serve as supreme court judges in Pakistan), then AI might unfairly favour men for those roles in the future.

Across the world, there is a gender pay gap, women in the labour force earn less than men for similar work. Women spend more time undertaking caring roles within the family, including unpaid childcare. AI-based technology can reinforce existing gender stereotypes against women. For example, virtual assistants such as Alexa and Siri exhibit female voices and features. Further, they are used to perform secretarial tasks which are traditionally assigned to women. Unfortunately, due to traditional gender roles assigned to women, it is believed that women lack leadership skills.

Women are already underrepresented in senior positions and leadership roles at workplaces. In Pakistan particularly, the female labour force participation stands at 25 per cent. It is well below rates for countries with similar income levels.

The use of AI for workforce management has been rapidly increasing in the world of work. This can integrate gender bias in decisions regarding recruitment, task assignment, performance evaluation and promotion in workplaces that are utilizing AI for workforce management. The biases regarding gender, race, religious beliefs, or disability embedded in the technical specifications of recruitment tools can lead to biased evaluations of candidates.

Therefore, it is essential to ensure that the use of AI in the workplace does not cause discrimination against women. Pakistan already has a legal framework that prohibits discrimination against women. Article 25 of the constitution provides for equality before the law and the equal protection of the law and states that there shall be no discrimination based on sex. Further, Article 25(3) allows the state to make special provisions for the protection of women.

Additionally, the Protection against Harassment of Women at the Workplace Act 2010 (and the 2022 Amendment) prohibits discrimination based on gender. It states: “discrimination on the basis of gender, which may or may not be sexual in nature, but which may embody a discriminatory and pre-judicial mindset or notion, resulting in discriminatory behaviour on the basis of gender against the complainant.”

The UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) was adopted in 1979 by the UN General Assembly and ratified by Pakistan on December 3, 1996. Article 2 of CEDAW states that “States Parties condemn discrimination against women in all its forms.” Further, Article 11 states that “States parties shall take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women in the field of employment in order to ensure, on a basis of equality of men and women, the same rights, in particular: (a) the right to work as an inalienable right of all human beings. (b) the right to the same employment opportunities, including the application of the same criteria for selection in matters of employment.”

Therefore, Pakistan has national and international obligations to ensure that gender discrimination does not arise in the workplace. This can be interpreted to include discrimination arising in the workplace due to the use of AI. Nevertheless, it is important to highlight that currently, the use of AI in the workplace remains unregulated in Pakistan.

We must ensure that we are effectively harnessing the power of AI to narrow the existing gender equality gaps as opposed to perpetuating and exacerbating them.

We must aim to design and develop novel technologies that help close the existing gender gaps. This includes training AI on datasets which can serve as tools for women’s empowerment in the workplace.

Workplaces must be proactive in ensuring that emerging technology advances gender parity. On this Women’s Day, and going forward, we must raise our voices to forge a gender-equal world by utilizing the power of technological advancements so that we can eliminate gender inequality rather than exacerbate it.

The writer is a barrister. She tweets/posts @RidaT95 and can be reached at: ridaatahir@gmail.com